cinema obscura: the missing songs/moments from Milos Forman's "Hair" (1979)

Twyla Tharp's athletic dance corps performs the Hare Krishna dream sequence

Milos Forman's brilliant 1979 film version of the Ragni-Rado-MacDermott tribal rock musical, "Hair," opened at a time when critics were particularly resistant to the idea of movie musicals, much more so than audiences.

The studios, perhaps in an effort to court the reviewers, began pairing their big musical properties with a rather eclectic group of iconic filmmakers - Sidney Lumet and "The Wiz," John Huston and "Annie," Sir Richard Attenborough and "A Chorus Line" and Forman and "Hair." The ploy didn't work. The critics remained resistant, although Foreman's film was far better received that those by Lumet, Huston and Attenborough.

Personally speaking, I find "The Wiz" (which looks at if it had been shot through a microscope) and especially "A Chorus Line" (whose material I always found pretentious and insular) both unwatchable, but Huston's ”Annie” is perfectly fine and "Hair" is utterly unique, thanks largely to the commingling of Forman's singularly foreign sensibility and choreographer Twyla Tharp's unconventional moves.

Unfortunately, at 121 minutes, the release print of "Hair" doesn't contain everything that Forman filmed. Missing are musical numbers that, while trimmed from the film, can still be heard on the soundtrack album - the seminal "Frank Mills," "Air," "My Conviction," "Abie Baby" and "Fourscore."

After Forman expanded his "Amadeus" (1984) from 160 minutes to 180 minutes in the 2002, I hoped that he would go back and restore "Hair." But the harsh reality of the film business is that unsuccessful films are rarely given a second chance. There was a reason (not necessarily a good one) to expand "Amadeus": It had won eight Oscars.

The big omission from the "Hair" score is, of course, "Frank Mills," a song which one would think is inexpendable. Sung by the character of Chrissy, played in the film by Suzette Charles (whose role was entirely eliminated), the song is like a lulling anthem to the sweet obliviousness of apathy and is achingly beautiful in its utter simplicity.

If the name Suzette Charles rings a bell, it's because she would go on to be named Miss America - by default. In 1983, at age 20 (four years after "Hair" was filmed), Charles was named first runner up in the contest, after Vanessa Williams, and was eventually given the crown when Williams was revealed to be the subject of compromising photographs.

When I mentioned all this to Forman during an interview for the initial release of "Amadeus," he was delighted although he admitted that, by then, he had only a dim memory of Charles and her participation in "Hair."

Regarding the other songs missing from "Hair," Annie Golden sang "Air," Charlotte Rae did "My Conviction" and the late Nell Carter was among the singers on the combined "Abie Baby"/"Forescore."

One bit of trivia: The old RCA two-record soundtrack for the film does not list who sang what in the film, but the souvenir program for the movie included a removable plastic recording of selected songs from the film, with the singers listed (including Charles on "Frank Mills").

One of the songs in the film, "Walking in Space," is sung on screen by a young Asian actress playing a Vietnamese girl, but the singing voice coming out of her mouth belongs to ... Betty Buckley. I always wondered why that voice sounded so familiar - and so great.

Note in Passing: Two other film musicals of the era were helmed by less illustrious filmmakers - "Grease" by Randall Kleiser and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" by the late Colin Higgins. Both, along with "Annie," were hugely popular with audiences, particularly "Grease" (as we all know by now). So much for the myth that moviegoers turned their backs on the genre. Not so. It was the studios that rudely slammed the door shut.

façade: Mimsy Farmer

One of the minor icons of the 1960s and '70s, the fascinating Mimsy Farmer flitted from Hollywood ingenue to biker-flick staple to jet-setting international attraction with an adjustable breeziness that made her credible in each morphing and that explains the small, select cult that never lost interest in the blonde actress.

Deceptively all-American and wholesome-looking, Farmer shrewdly subverted her first major role - as the assertive Claris Coleman in Delmer Daves' "Spencer's Mountain" in 1963 - by playing it with a shockingly candid sexuality and idiosyncratic line readings that made everything sound, well, dirty. If Warners was grooming her to be Natalie Wood's successor - and it's apparent that the studio was - you can appreciate both its reasoning and its misjudgment. She didn't wait. Farmer used her debut to undercut the powers.

A couple year's later, she did the same thing in Harvey Hart's "Bus Riley's Back in Town" (1965), nominally written by William Inge but credited to "Walter Gage" after the studio decided to showcase Ann-Margret, enlarging her role. That was good. Apparently, no one paid any attention to Farmer who got in under the radar and, again, quietly and effectively stole the film - and reduced Ann-Margret - in a matter of a handful of scenes.

Then came the biker flicks for Farmer, the most memorable for me being 1967's "Hot Rod to Hell," starring Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain, before she  headed to Europe where she made the drug-laden "More" for Barbet Schroeder in 1969. The film was written by the former New York Times movie critic, Eugene Archer, with Farmer responsible for "additional dialogue." "More" was the head film of its time, Farmer became the darling of the Croisette and she pretty much stayed in Europe, returning to the United States for some occasional TV work.

Her most popular film during this time was Dario Argent's horror film, "Four Flies on Grey Velvet"/"4 mosche di velluto grigio"(1971), which expanded beyond art houses to become a mainstream hit here.

Although seen only sporadically here over the past five decades, Farmer managed to make about 50 films, just about all of them in Europe. In retrospect, she seems like a not unpleasant mirage, an image that now seems at once blurred and vivid. I miss her and regret that I didn't have the time, energy or inclination to keep up with her unusual career. Thank heaven for film, video and DVD. I can always create my own Mimsy Farmer Film Festival which, in addition to the titles already mentioned, would naturally include those three biker films - "Riot on the Sunset Strip," "Devil's Angels" and "The Wild Racers."

Now, whatever happened to another singular actress, Kaki Hunter?

Note in Passing: Check out Dave Kehr's comments on the DVD release of "Hot Rods to Hell" in his 2007 essay for The New York Times.

"And coming up in our next hour - Robin's exclusive sit-down interview with the amazing little gorilla boy and his parents! But first..."

The handsome, sentient Harambe's fate was sealed the very minute that kid fell into his moat.  Whatever would have transpired, he would have been shot and killed.

Police Lieutenant: "Well, Denham, the airplanes got him."

Carl Denham: "Oh no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty that killed the beast."

The familiar dialogue, of course, is from the iconic 1933 production of "King Kong," written by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose and co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack.

But in the case of handsome Harambe, the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla who was murdered by the facility that was supposed to protect and nurture him, it was reckless stupidity that killed this gentle, magnificent creature.

Harambe was murdered on Saturday, May28^th, the day after his 17^th  birthday.

A willful child.  A possibly negligent mother. A clueless zoo.  A dead gorilla.

I reference this disturbing story, which has nothing to do with movies other than its unsettling similarity to "King Kong," because it will not go away anytime soon. With the media being what they are today - namely, insatiable and shameless - be prepared for the boy and his parents, when they are finally and officially unmasked, to be all over the place, along with the zoo's executive director and possibly even the gorilla's killer.  All of them are likely to be quite ubiquitous for at least a week or two, especially on television - on the morning infotainment shows in particular.

I predict that the unnaturally cheerful group on ABC's "Good Morning, America!" will get first dibs, sensitively questioning the kid and mother, listening attentively to some expert and feigning concern for the dead animal. It's what an overpaid television executive would call "great TV."

By now, I'm sure that you are familiar with the disturbing story of the gorilla Harambe, an inmate at the Cincinnati Zoo, who was assassinated by the zoo after a four-year-old child ignored his mother, went on an "adventure" and fell into the gorilla's moat. Harambe was an endangered species, being held in Cincinnati for breeding purposes.  It's an ugly story.

And this story follows quickly on the heels of the one about the baby bison that was euthanized by its caretakers at Yellowstone National Park after visitors there, who meant no harm, handled it.  Why was the bison put down?  It was easier than caring for it.  (I'm paraphrasing what Yellowstone's officials actually said but that's the gist of it.)  And why was Harambe put down?  That's among the questions I'll ask later.  But the bottom line is, it's not a good time for captive animals, friends.

And it hasn't helped that the spokesperson for the zoo - its executive director Thayne Maynard - has come across as curiously callous and unflappable.  Perhaps he has been trying to be a calm or "manly" presence in the face of a tragedy or perhaps he's naturally stoic, but a little emotion and some show of concern would have made him more convincing and, by extension, his dubious decision less drastic.

After Harambe was shot and killed, it's been reported that reproductive bilogists extraced "viable sperm" from the gorilla for artificial insemination and gneetic research.

"There's a future," Maynard has said. "It's not the end of his gene pool." Not a good comment.  Sounds like he got what his zoo wanted.  Even in death, after his life had been diminished by being jailed in a zoo, Harambe was exploited and humiliated. Being imprisoned wasn't enough.

As for the media, nothing in-depth or tough has emerged. As for questions that need to be - and should be - answered, I have these...

• Why would a woman with four children in tow, including an infant, go to a zoo with no support?

• Why would anyone take a four-year-old, let alone an infant to a zoo?  Does anyone realistically think a four-year-old would absorb anything from a zoo visit (other than the fact that gorillas, or any other precious animals, shouldn't be imprisoned there)?

• Wouldn't a four-year-old be better served by an insipid Disney cartoon about gorillas?  Or is it possible that this four-year-old has seen one too many insipid Disney cartoons and, consequently, can't distinquish fantasy from reality?  (Hence, the headstrong kid's reported insistence that he be allowed to enter the habitat of an endangered species, ignoring the word "no" from his mother.)

• Why was the gorilla moat so easily accessed?  If a four-year-old could penetrate the barrier, anyone could.

• Where was the handler who normally socialized with Harambe? Namely, someone who could reason with the gorilla, given that it's been widely reported that one can indeed reason with a gorilla?  (Gorillas are apparently exactly like us, something most humans don't want to hear.  We're superior, see?  But are we really?)

• Given how quickly the zoo decided to put down Harambe, is it reasonable to assume that a sharpshooter is on the payroll full time and that a gun or rifle is readily available all the time? How handy.

• Who exactly shot Hamabre?  Why hasn't that Zoo employee been indentified?  And was the area cleared of the public for the killing?

• And why is so little information being extended by the zoo and the local police?  Why, for example, has the family been protected by both the authorities and the major media? Actually, anyone resourceful can go on the internet and easily locate this info.

• Why has the family hired the Gail Myers Public Relations firm to answer questions and make statements? A public relations firm?  Hmmm. No, this story is not going away anytime soon.

•  Shouldn't animals be protected from human interlopers, rather than the other way around? Isn't a zoo supposed to protect its unwilling prisoners, not kill them? And in this sad case, the victim was, again, an endangered species. Absolutely unbelievable.

• And why do we still have zoos?  Here's a case of an animal that was imprisoned his entire life, from his birth to his death, and then murdered when he became an inconvenient PR problem.

• OK, what if the kid had died before Harambe was shot?  I refuse to believe that the gorilla would have intentionally killed the boy but that the kid would have died accidentally.  Yes, what if the kid had died?  Is it safe to assume that Harambe still would have been put down - in response to the situation?  I think so, absolutely. Perhaps he would have been taken down even if the kid lived - shot for mauling the boy.

Perhaps he would have been taken down even if the kid lived - shot for mauling the boy.

Harambe's fate, unfortunately, was sealed the very moment that kid fell into his moat.

Finally, a touchy observation that has been brought up in an excellent editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer:  "Zoo officials killed him according to the principle that human life is worth more than animal life. Though we tend to acknowledge it less readily or consistently, some animal lives must in turn be considered more valuable than others." At last, someone said it.

It's humans who, in convenient self-interest, decided that human lives are so much more important than animal lives. A case of conflict of interest.

Note in Passing: Harambe means "pull together" in Swahili.  His nickname at the zoo was Handsome. Perfectly describing the mood of the moment is Anthony Seta, organizer of the vigil in memory of Harambe, who in this brief video, notes that he was part of the Cincinatti community.

cinema obscura: annoyingly altmanesque

Robert Altman in 1978, directing Mia Farrow and Vittorio Gassman in "A Wedding."  Not good.

As a working critic, I was often in the minority on films and filmmakers, guided by a rather simple, but rigid, personal theory - namely, that there is no place for loyalty (actually, blind loyalty) in movie criticism.

I was embarrassed by a colleague who developed a crush on a movie or moviemaker early on and willfully refused to grow or move beyond that.

I was impossible.

Which brings me tone of my early heroes of the cinema - Robert Altman.

Altman was already something of a Hollywood veteran when he made his breakthrough film, "M*A*S*H" (1970), at age 45. As rebellious as the young audience to which it appealed, "M*A*S*H" restlessly defined the New Hollywood of its time, and with both that film and the one that followed, "Brewster McCloud" (1970), Altman perfected an improvistory style driven by a lot of rapid, energetic, overlapping verbal outpouring.

I was half Altman's age (part of his target audience) and I was in love.

What he created was a cinematic riff, a cool-jazz style to which he would invariably return during his up-and-down career, arguably hitting something of a peak with "Nashville" (1975), his most defining film.

"Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson," "Quintet," "The Player," "Short Cuts," "Prêt-à-Porter," "Dr. T and the Women," "Gosford Park," "The Company" and "A Prairie Home Companion," (his final film in 2006, the year he died) carefully followed the same formula - and were all over the map in terms of hits, misses and in-betweens.

But the formula turned rancid with two titles in particular - "A Wedding" (1978) and "Health" (1980), which is alternately known as "H.E.A.L.T.H." and "HealtH."  (Don't ask me why.)  These two films, both made for Twentieth Century-Fox, find Altman at his most condescending and most cynical, a filmic trademark of his that was starting to wear terribly thin.

His rancor, which was so bracing in "M*A*S*H" and so trendy in "Nashville," was beginning to leave a vaguely nasty aftertaste.

And the two are also painfully unfunny, with "A Wedding" serving as a rather snide, brutal attack on the titular event - which was already something of a cliché in movies - and "Health" aiming at the facile political correctness and hypocrisies of health-food devotés - an idea that was ahead of its time and very promising. But a missed opportunity here.

Both have huge casts, the usual ragtag Altman collection of disparate actors.  "A Wedding," a true narrative mess, details the coming together of two families - Eurotrash on one side (Vittorio Gassman and Nina Van Pallandt as the parents of the groom), vulgar WASPS on the other (Paul Dooley and Carol Burnett as the wannabe parents of the bride, named Snooks and Tulip, no less).  Neither is spared Altman's vitriol or judgment.

Lillian Gish, Mia Farrow, Geraldine Chaplin, Howard Duff, Dina Merrill, Viveca Lindfors, Lauren Hutton and literally dozens of other familiar actors come and go and bump into each other in the film's monied setting, a sprawling Oak Park mansion.  "A Wedding" is easily Altman's most (over-)populated movie, but no one here is companionable.

 James Garner and Ann Ryerson trying to resuscitate Lauren Bacall (and "Health")

"Health," meanwhile, takes jabs at health-food fanatics holed up at a convention in Florida. Seeing it again recently, I was struck by how much I've disliked Robert Altman's taste in actors (frankly, his ever-changing "stock company" always left me cold); by his misuse of his occasional celebrity players (in this case, Lauren Bacall, Glenda Jackson, James Garner and, again, Burnett) and by how self-conscious, obvious and shrill Altman could be when attempting decidedly odd/oddball touches.

Case in point: The wildly annoying strolling singers in "Health" who warble inane numbers while wearing ridiculous "vegetable" costumes. (FYI: "Health" originally clocked in at 105 minutes, but for some reason, the Fox-owned print of it that would unreel with some frequency on the Fox Movie Channel runs five minutes less - 100 minutes. Curious.)

It was the release of this film when I started to seriously question my enthusiasm for Altman, a fascination that started in my youth but dwindled as both he and I aged. Towards the end, I found his films as annoying as those singers. Anyway, I realize that Hollywod rarely remakes bad films, but given how health-conscious that present-day society pretends to be, "Health" should be an exception. Time has caught up with it.

The material is definitely ripe for a revamping. Perhaps Wes Anderson or Alexander Payne could get it right. Just a suggestion.

Essential Altman: That said, there are a number of Altman films that mean the world to me, starting with "Brewster McCloud," which remains a vivid seminal movie experience from my lost youth.  Following closely behind it are "California Split," Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean," "Popeye," "Fool for Love," "Cookie's Fortune," "Prêt-à-Porter," "A Prairie Home Companion," "Dr. T and the Women"and the very idiosyncratic "A Perfect Couple," not the usual Altman suspects.

And, yes, "M*A*S*H" remains a revelation.  As for "Nashville," it's addictively watchable, but knowing that Altman originally shot it as an eight-hour film, I'm way too aware of its many narrative gaps.

HBO and the bane of 'edge'

Lena Dunham, HBO's poster girl

It came as little surprise to learn this week that Michael Lombardo is leaving his current post, or that his exit comes on the heels of his colleague Michael Ellenberg doing the exact same thing last January. And until this week, I had no idea that Lombardo and Ellenberg even existed.

I guess I should explain.

Ellenberg was HBO's executive in charge of drama, replaced in January by someone named Casey Bloys, formerly HBO's executive in charge of comedy.  (Got that?)  And Lombardo is/was HBO's programming president.  I'm not sure what these three guys do exactly, but from where I sit, none of them was doing an impressive job. For about two years now, I've been burdening my wife with complaints about HBO, specifically its erratic, largely unsatisfying programming and the anemic number of episodes aired for each show - usually 6 or 7, tops, for its comedies.

I'm using the word "comedies" loosely here because precious few HBO comedies of late have been funny.  They've mostly been "edgy," a quality which has become the new porn for the average TV viewer.  (But more about that later.)  Anyway, despite gobbling up umpteen undeserving Emmy awards every year, HBO has become a dim shadow of itself, coasting on the dusty credentials created in its heyday by "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" (and, much later, "Curb Your Enthusiasm") and pushing the "edge" envelope instead of anything remotely creative.

Its shows have become naggingly similiar.

It's difficult to pinpoint when the decline started but I trace it back to such shows as "Big Love," essentially little more than a trendy re-do of "The Sopranos." and "Hung," a puerile, one-joke affair about a guy's infamously huge penis which, for some reason, HBO refused to show. Yes, HBO!

But let's move to the present.  Beyond "Games of Throne," which has become something of a franchise (if there is such a thing in the world of cable TV), and the initial season of "True Detective" (which was terrific on every level), what else is there on HBO?  There's Bill Maher shamelessly pontificating (and, much worse, generally repeating himself), an occasional worthwhile film (the current "All the Way") and a collection of recurring sitcoms, each of which, at best, was worthy of one good season.

"Girls," by wunderkind Lena Dunham, got off to an edgy start (there's that word again) but has been stale for about three years now - although its enthusiastic depiction of nasty, dirty sex sets it apart from anything else on TV or even in movie theaters. (Virtually no one is modern film has sex anymore and, when they do, the woman usually wears a brassiere.  Huh?)  The Duplas Brothers' "Togetherness" was smart and had promise but actually disintegrated during its painful second and final season.  And the mercifully short-lived "Looking" only confirmed every bad idea that homophobes have about gay men. Did it really intend to do that?

Then there's "Ballers," a show whose humor is limited to that dubious title.  (Real mature, HBO.)  Mike Judge had a good idea with "Silicon Valley," but after season one, it went on an endless loop with the same storyline repeated ad infinitum (i.e., some heartless shark is always trying to steal the clueless techies' progressive ideas and bastardize them).  And "Veep" has been so reduced that it now exists as an excuse for the talented Julia Louis-Dreyfuss to end every lame joke with the word "cock," or "balls," or "pussy" or worse. This is Emmy-worthy? What happened to the sophisticated humor that "Veep" promised and delivered in its first season?

Laura Dern's now-forgotten "Enlightened" was a true original, a tiny gem, but even that went on one season too long. TV has yet to learn when to call it quits, a good case in point being CBS's "The Big Bang Theory," a once-oddball delight which has been neutered into a conventional sitcom success.

Aaron Sorkins' "The Newsroom" kept getting renewed, even though one season was quite enough, thank you.  And, this year, the much-touted "Vinyl" was an unwatchable mess, despite the behind-the-scenes, high-powered presence of Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger (or perhaps because of it).

But it had "edge," something that AMC successfully introduced (and milked) with "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," hooking viewers on bad behavior and rationalized amorality - and inspiring the three tired major networks to do the same with the likes of "Scandal" and "The Good Wife."

The negative result of the network's lazy preoccupation with edginess is that it has conditioned the average TV viewer to except and accept nothing less.

"Nashville," an exceptional, old-fashioned piece of serial storytelling which refreshingly eschewed "edge," never received much love from ABC, which continually showed its preference for the aforementioned "Scandal," and it was prematurely canceled this week. Its audience was reportedly smaller than "Scandal's" but I'd wager that it was a lot more intelligent and discerning. (ABC's earlier obsession was the overrated sitcom, "Modern Family," which despite a bit of diversity, isn't modern at all but rather retro and dated, what with its doofus dads and self-satisfied, know-it-all moms.)

Perhaps viewers picked up on ABC's disinterest. The Emmy voters certainly did, ignoring "Nashville" every year of its four seasons. But kudos to Connie Britton (pictured above with Charles Esten), Hayden Panettiere and their leader Callie Khouri for fearlessly remaining true to their mission, namely telling an on-going story straight, with no frills. Or edge.

The same Emmy disinterest seems to have plagued A&E's exceptional "Bates Motel," which, week-in and week-out, boasted world-class performances by stars Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore (pictured below), whose strange, intricate acting duet has very carefully prepared us for events that will take us (in its fifth and final season) to the Hitchcock film that inspired it, "Psycho." So, why has this show been ignored?

Perhaps because A&E lacks Emmy credibility?

Who knows. All I know is that both it and "Nashville" have acquired loyal cult followings that a more responsible, astute television executive would have nurtured and exploited to the advantage of both show and network.

But those days - and those men (yes, they're mostly men) - are gone.

Sadly.

Still it was a joy to encounter the intelligence and rare adventurousness of "Bates Motel" and "Nashville," both more satisfying than the edginess that the networks now covet to the extreme and that HBO sells as high art.

Note in Passing: The media have been deeply invested in the rise of "edge" on television, particularly the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times, which provides recaps of only the trendiest shows, the usual suspects.  Can't get enough of "Scandal" or "Girls"?  Well, check out the Times, which has been complicit in the hasty elevation of such shows.